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Which novel by a Brontė sister do you prefer?

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Poll Question: Which novel by a Brontė sister do you prefer?
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BaldFriede View Drop Down
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    Posted: June 11 2019 at 06:09
The Brontė sisters are fascinating. Each of them wrote at least one novel that is top notch. Anne wrote two, of which her second "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" was for a long time under the radar because it was over a hundred years ahead of its time but has in recent years been widely regarded as a masterpiece. Charlotte wrote four, of which "Jane Eyre" is considered to be her masterpiece. Emily only wrote one novel, "Wuthering Heights".

I highly recommend to read all three. The main reason that Anne's novel went under the radar is because her sister Charlotte criticized it. She commented about the novel in a letter: "That it had faults of execution, faults of art, was obvious, but faults of intention of feeling could be suspected by none who knew the writer. For my part, I consider the subject unfortunately chosen - it was one the author was not qualified to handle at once vigorously and truthfully", which makes me think she felt the character of Arthur Huntingdon was too close a portrait of their brother Branwell.

Edited by BaldFriede - June 11 2019 at 08:14


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote chopper Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 11 2019 at 07:39
I haven't read the Tenant of Wildfell Hall so I've gone for that option as it's hard to choose between the other two. If you forced me at gunpoint I'd probably go for Jane Eyre. I do like Wuthering Heights but found the similarity of the names confusing at times.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Icarium Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 11 2019 at 07:43
Ive only read Jane, ought to read the othrr two also
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote omphaloskepsis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 11 2019 at 08:18
Wuthering Heights.   The only one that I've read multiple times. 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Cristi Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 11 2019 at 08:25
I've only read Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote BaldFriede Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 11 2019 at 08:26
For more information about the Brontė family and the novels go to these Wikipedia pages:

The family:


The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:


Jane Eyre:


Wuthering Heights:



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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Icarium Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 11 2019 at 08:42
Jane Eyre was curriculum on an English bachelor program Madness in Writining which delt with the gothic novel of 1800s the Freudian element of the uncanny and the elemeny of the sublime
Which Jane Eyre was curriculum, but Wuthering Highrs was also reccomended read.

Lots of elements of the uncanny in Jane Eyre
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Vompatti Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 11 2019 at 08:48
I did not read Anne's novel and like only Emily's
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote BaldJean Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 11 2019 at 10:15
despite being highly controversial at the time it came out (1848) the novel was initially a big success, perhaps it was so controversial. but Charlotte prohibited a republication of the novel after Anne's death.

the novel is about a woman leaving her alcoholic, abusive and sexually promiscuous husband taking their 5-year old son with her.

considering the fact that women were more or less the property of their husbands back then (a quote from Wikipedia: "Women's rights were extremely limited in this era, losing ownership of their wages, all of their physical property, excluding land property, and all other cash they generated once married. When a Victorian man and woman married, the rights of the woman were legally given over to her spouse." this included any rights to any child as well) this was extremely daring of Anne, which is the reason the book is seen as one of the very first feminist novels


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote moshkito Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 12 2019 at 07:37
Hi,

I love reading women's work ... I really do ... but the Bronte's are not the ones I would recommend. In my book they are not as important as so many other things written by women BEFORE and AFTER the Bronte sisters.

Examples:

George Elliot
Mary Shelley
Mary Woolstonecraft
Louisa May Alcott
Ann Radcliffe (personal favorite)
Emily Dickinson
Clara Reeve
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Doris Lessing (personal favorite!)
Virginia Woolf
Margaret Atwood
Anne Rice (her erotica specially is better than the other stuff!)

Just to give you folks an idea ... for me the Bronte's don't mean much ... and someone like Doris Lessing is much more valuable and important. Go read "The Golden Notebook" and then close it out with "Briefing for a Descent Into Hell".

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote BaldJean Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 12 2019 at 09:05
Originally posted by moshkito moshkito wrote:

Hi,

I love reading women's work ... I really do ... but the Bronte's are not the ones I would recommend. In my book they are not as important as so many other things written by women BEFORE and AFTER the Bronte sisters.

Examples:

George Elliot
Mary Shelley
Mary Woolstonecraft
Louisa May Alcott
Ann Radcliffe (personal favorite)
Emily Dickinson
Clara Reeve
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Doris Lessing (personal favorite!)
Virginia Woolf
Margaret Atwood
Anne Rice (her erotica specially is better than the other stuff!)

Just to give you folks an idea ... for me the Bronte's don't mean much ... and someone like Doris Lessing is much more valuable and important. Go read "The Golden Notebook" and then close it out with "Briefing for a Descent Into Hell".

I think you underestimate the Brontė's; their literary impact is formidable, and in my opinion they fully deserve their accolades.

Ann Radcliffe is in my opinion way too long-winded; "The Mysteries of Udolpho", the only book Friede and I read of her so far, took ages to get to the point. endless landscape descriptions, which were certainly well done - but were they really necessary for the story? Friede and I (we love to read together lying side by side on our bellies) took that book down many many times before we finished it, which is very rare with us; we usually finish books very quickly.

interesting that you mention Mary Wollstonecraft but leave out her more famous daughter Mary Shelley. and where is Jane Austen on your list?!

Susanna Clarke is one of the very best authors I recently read; her novel "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" is very thick (1100 pages), but Friede and I read those 1100 pages in no time; it was so hilarious.

Patricia Highsmith should definitely also be on the list.

Keri Hulme is definitely worth mentioning; for her novel "The Bone People" she was awarded the Man Booker Prize in 1985.

a few German women authors I would like to add: Christa Wolf, Irmtraud Morgner and of course Herta Müller, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2009.

I could add many many more...


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote omphaloskepsis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 12 2019 at 11:01
Originally posted by moshkito moshkito wrote:

Hi,

I love reading women's work ... I really do ... but the Bronte's are not the ones I would recommend. In my book they are not as important as so many other things written by women BEFORE and AFTER the Bronte sisters.

Examples:

George Elliot
Mary Shelley
Mary Woolstonecraft
Louisa May Alcott
Ann Radcliffe (personal favorite)
Emily Dickinson
Clara Reeve
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Doris Lessing (personal favorite!)
Virginia Woolf
Margaret Atwood
Anne Rice (her erotica specially is better than the other stuff!)

Just to give you folks an idea ... for me the Bronte's don't mean much ... and someone like Doris Lessing is much more valuable and important. Go read "The Golden Notebook" and then close it out with "Briefing for a Descent Into Hell".

 

Great list.  However, I prefer Lessing less, than almost everyone else on your list. The Bronte's rock. My favorite Female author ever?  Nobel Prize winner "Sigrid Undsett.  But then again, Lessing won a Nobel too!Wink

My other favorite female authors?
Edith Warton
Stella Gibbons
Jean Rhys
Muriel Spark
Ursula K Le Ginn
Flannery O'Conner
Leslie Marmon Silko
Angela Carter
Joyce Carol Oates
Susanna Clarke
Elizabeth Kostova
Sylvia  Plath
Tananarive Due
Poppy Z Brite 
Gillian Flynn
Mina Loy
Caitlin R Kiernan 
Shirley Jackson
Willa Cather 
Kate Chopin
Iris Murdoch







Edited by omphaloskepsis - June 12 2019 at 12:20
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote moshkito Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 12 2019 at 13:39
Originally posted by omphaloskepsis omphaloskepsis wrote:

...
Great list.  However, I prefer Lessing less, than almost everyone else on your list. The Bronte's rock. My favorite Female author ever?  Nobel Prize winner "Sigrid Undsett.  But then again, Lessing won a Nobel too!Wink
...

Lessing is, at times difficult to read since she is, a very different "feminist" without exactly being a dressed up and hat wearing symbol for the ... groups! And considering that she wrote many of these over 50 years ago, the importance of her stuff is even more poignant and sometimes scary (The Grass is Singing).

Originally posted by omphaloskepsis omphaloskepsis wrote:

...
Edith Warton
Stella Gibbons
Ursula K Le Ginn
Sylvia  Plath
Willa Cather 
Iris Murdoch
...

I wanted to add more ... and there are many things in this group for example that are magnificent. for some reason Le Ginn never clicked with me. By the time she came up I was already reading Anne Rice, and (again) I thought her erotica was more interesting because it delved into better and stronger reasons for the vampire ideas and concepts, and specially its history ... or should I say ... lack of! Sylvia Plath is the darling of a lot of lit classes in college, and by that time I had already exhausted a couple of French authors that were beyond that. Jean Genet comes to mind, although his stuff is ... amazingly difficult to read, and much more "long winded" than many examples here.

I simply feel that Austen/Bronte were the Model for a lot of popular literature and not as important as they could have been ... even with WUTHERING HEIGHTS ... though seeing it with Merle Oberon, for me, has a way of destroying the emotional side of it all! I would rather see a more sexual/sensual person there ... and endup with a type of DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI thing (a la Oliver Reed and Ken Russell!) ... which makes much more sense for me.

It's the same thing, for me, as a total example, of hos Christianity has corrupted the stories from the Greek Myths and many the like ... by turning them inside out, into meaningless material ... the story of Medea is the greatest hatred work every written about "woman" ... and I say the messenger is a liar and a puppet for a group that doesn't want women with the powers and abilities they might have as a witch, for example. She's considered a murderess, when taking her kids out for a ride on those chariots, and the chariot turning over, would be easy to happen and youngsters would like suffer more than an adult ... but all a professor could say when I wrote all that was ... "who are you to think that you can know the classics better? ... Same thing for Oedipus when so many groups in those days relied on staying together and intermarrying as a way to be able to stay strong and ... in the case of Oedipus, to stay in power ... but in essence, including the really vicious part of Medea using this and that to kill Glauce, is one of the worst indications that the powerful and strong women of the past in the stories were not to remain known as such and that their "strength" would be shown as a problem, and specially a social hatred!

For me, the quality and depth is valuable, and the story can be really simple ... and I'm not a fan of material that goes around in circles, that sometimes feels like it is hiding something from you! I see too many people that do that all day long in front of me! 

They are not invisible, and neither is most literature for me!


Edited by moshkito - June 12 2019 at 13:44
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote omphaloskepsis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 12 2019 at 14:45
Originally posted by moshkito moshkito wrote:

Originally posted by omphaloskepsis omphaloskepsis wrote:

...
Great list.  However, I prefer Lessing less, than almost everyone else on your list. The Bronte's rock. My favorite Female author ever?  Nobel Prize winner "Sigrid Undsett.  But then again, Lessing won a Nobel too!Wink
...

Lessing is, at times difficult to read since she is, a very different "feminist" without exactly being a dressed up and hat wearing symbol for the ... groups! And considering that she wrote many of these over 50 years ago, the importance of her stuff is even more poignant and sometimes scary (The Grass is Singing).

Originally posted by omphaloskepsis omphaloskepsis wrote:

...
Edith Warton
Stella Gibbons
Ursula K Le Ginn
Sylvia  Plath
Willa Cather 
Iris Murdoch
...

I wanted to add more ... and there are many things in this group for example that are magnificent. for some reason Le Ginn never clicked with me. By the time she came up I was already reading Anne Rice, and (again) I thought her erotica was more interesting because it delved into better and stronger reasons for the vampire ideas and concepts, and specially its history ... or should I say ... lack of! Sylvia Plath is the darling of a lot of lit classes in college, and by that time I had already exhausted a couple of French authors that were beyond that. Jean Genet comes to mind, although his stuff is ... amazingly difficult to read, and much more "long winded" than many examples here.

I simply feel that Austen/Bronte were the Model for a lot of popular literature and not as important as they could have been ... even with WUTHERING HEIGHTS ... though seeing it with Merle Oberon, for me, has a way of destroying the emotional side of it all! I would rather see a more sexual/sensual person there ... and endup with a type of DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI thing (a la Oliver Reed and Ken Russell!) ... which makes much more sense for me.

It's the same thing, for me, as a total example, of hos Christianity has corrupted the stories from the Greek Myths and many the like ... by turning them inside out, into meaningless material ... the story of Medea is the greatest hatred work every written about "woman" ... and I say the messenger is a liar and a puppet for a group that doesn't want women with the powers and abilities they might have as a witch, for example. She's considered a murderess, when taking her kids out for a ride on those chariots, and the chariot turning over, would be easy to happen and youngsters would like suffer more than an adult ... but all a professor could say when I wrote all that was ... "who are you to think that you can know the classics better? ... Same thing for Oedipus when so many groups in those days relied on staying together and intermarrying as a way to be able to stay strong and ... in the case of Oedipus, to stay in power ... but in essence, including the really vicious part of Medea using this and that to kill Glauce, is one of the worst indications that the powerful and strong women of the past in the stories were not to remain known as such and that their "strength" would be shown as a problem, and specially a social hatred!

For me, the quality and depth is valuable, and the story can be really simple ... and I'm not a fan of material that goes around in circles, that sometimes feels like it is hiding something from you! I see too many people that do that all day long in front of me! 

They are not invisible, and neither is most literature for me!
 


Intriguing explanation, analysis, insights, and feelings!  Bravo!  Thanks for sharing, enjoyed it immensely. 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote BaldFriede Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 12 2019 at 18:34
[QUOTE=omphaloskepsis]
Ursula K Le Ginn
[QUOTE=omphaloskepsis]
Her name is actually Ursula K. Le Guin. I only read "The Left Hand of Darkness" by her so far and liked it.

Other great female authors:

Anna Seghers
Joan Aiken
Selma Lagerlöf
Siri Hustvedt !
Toni Morrison
Arundhati Roy !
Juli Zeh !
Robert Galbraith !

The ones with an exclamation mark are some of my very favourites.

Edited by BaldFriede - June 12 2019 at 18:37


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Jaketejas Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 12 2019 at 18:44
The Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula Le Guin was a fave when I was youngster.

I'm a big Ellis Peters fan, and I also love to read Agatha Christie.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote BaldJean Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 13 2019 at 08:11
Originally posted by BaldFriede BaldFriede wrote:

Juli Zeh !

Juli Zeh is a German author that should definitely be read. she writes philosophical thrillers in a stunning language. some of her books have been translated into English. start with her first "Adler und Engel", for which she was awarded the Deutscher Bücherpreis (German books award) for best debut novel in 2002. it was translated into English as "Eagles and Angels". the book was translated into 35 languages.

Zeh's writing is about the antagonism of chaos and order; she asks if and how meaning and ethics can be rebuilt when traditional values have become meaningless. recurring themes are questions of getting lost, of solidarity and of the fundamental norms and the environment in a society of individualization and globalization, in which common responsibility for the future of the world community are no longer recognizable


Edited by BaldJean - June 13 2019 at 08:27


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote moshkito Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 14 2019 at 07:50
Originally posted by BaldJean BaldJean wrote:

...
Zeh's writing is about the antagonism of chaos and order; she asks if and how meaning and ethics can be rebuilt when traditional values have become meaningless. recurring themes are questions of getting lost, of solidarity and of the fundamental norms and the environment in a society of individualization and globalization, in which common responsibility for the future of the world community are no longer recognizable

How interesting ... Edgar Froese just about says the same thing in that one BBC special in 6 parts, and proclaims that it was that kind of feeling and individuality that made the whole thing valuable as an artistic experience.

For an "artist", you have to do something like that ... because it is about what you see inside yourself that has to come out and not be sublimated to censorship and punishment from the all-well-meaning father, that destroys all the personality inside the child with his religion and sociality!

Now you know where I stand ... and I'm a card carrying freedom'ologist ... and have been fighting along with women't rights more often than most women give a sh*t! And you have not read anything I wrote to even know what I said!
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Odvin Draoi Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 20 2019 at 14:44
Jane Eyre is more gripping, easy to read and understand. 

Wuthering Heights is more intricate in general both story wise and theme wise; also more sophisticated regarding the setting(s), characters,  and more labyrinthine as for its plot.

I like them both, yet I liked reading Jane Eyre way more on my first readings.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote BaldJean Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 23 2019 at 17:30
Originally posted by Odvin Draoi Odvin Draoi wrote:

Jane Eyre is more gripping, easy to read and understand. 

Wuthering Heights is more intricate in general both story wise and theme wise; also more sophisticated regarding the setting(s), characters,  and more labyrinthine as for its plot.

I like them both, yet I liked reading Jane Eyre way more on my first readings.

you should most definitely give "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" a try too


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